{"id":286920,"date":"2025-01-27T12:01:20","date_gmt":"2025-01-27T12:01:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=286920"},"modified":"2025-01-27T08:57:22","modified_gmt":"2025-01-27T08:57:22","slug":"leaked-documents-expose-deep-ties-between-israeli-army-and-microsoft","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2025\/01\/leaked-documents-expose-deep-ties-between-israeli-army-and-microsoft\/","title":{"rendered":"Leaked Documents Expose Deep Ties between Israeli Army and Microsoft"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

The Commanding Officer of the IDF’s Northern Command, Major General Ori Gordin, visits the commanders and soldiers of the 7th Brigade during their brigade exercise on Israel’s northern border, 25 Sep 2024.\u00a0 (IDF Spokesperson).<\/p><\/div>\n

23 Jan 2025 – Since 7 Oct 2023, the Israeli military has relied heavily on cloud and AI services from Microsoft and its partner OpenAI, while the tech giant\u2019s staff embed with different units to support rollout, a joint investigation reveals.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Microsoft has a \u201cfootprint in all major military infrastructures\u201d in Israel, and sales of the company\u2019s cloud and artificial intelligence services to the Israeli army have skyrocketed since the beginning of its onslaught on Gaza, according to leaked commercial records from Israel\u2019s Defense Ministry and files from Microsoft\u2019s Israeli subsidiary.<\/p>\n

The documents reveal that dozens of units in the Israeli army have purchased services from Microsoft\u2019s cloud computing platform, Azure, in recent months \u2014 including units in the air, ground, and naval forces, as well as the elite intelligence squad, Unit 8200. Microsoft has also provided the military with extensive access to OpenAI\u2019s GPT-4 language model, the engine behind ChatGPT, thanks to the close partnership<\/a> between the two companies.<\/p>\n

These revelations are the product of an investigation by +972 Magazine and Local Call in collaboration with The Guardian. It is based in part on documents obtained by Drop Site News, which has published<\/a> its own story. The investigation shows how the Israeli army deepened its reliance on civilian tech giants after October 7, and comes amid growing protests<\/a> by cloud company employees who fear that the technology they developed has helped Israel commit war crimes.<\/p>\n

Army units revealed to be using services provided by Azure include the Air Force\u2019s Ofek Unit, which is responsible for managing large databases of potential targets for lethal airstrikes (known as the \u201ctarget bank\u201d); the Matspen Unit, which is responsible for the development of operational and combat support systems; the Sapir Unit, which maintains the ICT infrastructure in the Military Intelligence Directorate; and even the Military Advocate General\u2019s Corps<\/a>, which is tasked with prosecuting Palestinians and lawbreaking soldiers in the occupied territories.<\/p>\n

According to one document, as revealed<\/a> today by The Guardian, Unit 81, the technological arm of the Military Intelligence Directorate\u2019s Special Operations Division that manufactures surveillance equipment for the Israeli intelligence community, also receives cloud services and support from Azure.<\/p>\n

\"Microsoft<\/a><\/p>\n
Microsoft development center in Herzliya Pituah, Israel, October 30, 2020. (Gili Yaari\/Flash90)<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

The documents additionally indicate that the \u201cRolling Stone\u201d system, which the army uses to manage the population registry and movement of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza, is maintained by Microsoft Azure. Azure is also used in a highly classified unit inside the Israeli Prime Minister\u2019s Office, where Microsoft employees with security clearance are required to sign off and oversee the provision of cloud services.<\/p>\n

According to the documents, the AI services that the Defense Ministry purchased from Microsoft include translation (about half of the average monthly consumption during the first year of the war), OpenAI\u2019s GPT-4 model (about a quarter of the consumption), a speech-to-text conversion tool, and an automatic document analysis tool. In October 2023, the army\u2019s monthly consumption of AI services provided by Azure jumped sevenfold compared to the month preceding the war; by March 2024, it was 64 times higher.<\/p>\n

Although the documents do not specify how the different army units use these cloud storage and AI tools, they do indicate that about a third of the purchases were intended for \u201cair-gapped\u201d systems that are isolated from the internet and public networks, strengthening the possibility that the tools have been used for operational purposes \u2014 such as combat and intelligence \u2014 as opposed to simply logistical or bureaucratic functions. Indeed, two sources in Unit 8200 confirmed that the Military Intelligence Directorate purchased storage and AI services from Microsoft Azure for intelligence-gathering activities, and three other sources in the unit confirmed that similar services were purchased<\/a> from Amazon\u2019s cloud computing platform, AWS.<\/p>\n

The documents further show that Microsoft personnel work closely with units in the Israeli army to develop products and systems. Dozens of units have purchased \u201cextended engineering services\u201d from Microsoft, in which, according to the company\u2019s website, \u201cMicrosoft experts become an integral part of the [customer\u2019s] team.\u201d<\/p>\n

The documents describe, for example, that in recent years the Military Intelligence Directorate has purchased private development meetings and professional workshops, which Microsoft\u2019s experts have given to soldiers at a cost of millions of dollars. Between October 2023 and June 2024 alone, the Israeli Defense Ministry spent $10 million to purchase 19,000 hours of engineering support from Microsoft.<\/p>\n

An intelligence officer who served in a technological role in Unit 8200 in recent years, and worked directly with Microsoft Azure employees before October 7 to develop a surveillance system used to monitor Palestinians, told +972 and Local Call that the company\u2019s developers became so embedded that he referred to them as \u201cpeople who are already working with the unit,\u201d as if they were soldiers.<\/p>\n

\"Israeli<\/a><\/p>\n
Israeli soldiers operating in Gaza City, July 28, 2024. (Erik Marmor\/Flash90)<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

The source added that during the development phase, Microsoft Azure staff came for meetings at an army base to examine the possibility of building the surveillance system on top of the company\u2019s cloud infrastructure. \u201cThe idea was that this thing should be managed in Azure, because it [uses] so much data,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Seven sources in the Israeli Defense Ministry, the army, and the arms industry confirmed that since October 7, the army has become increasingly dependent on the services it purchases from civilian cloud providers for operational activity in Gaza. According to army sources, the storage space and processing power provided by the cloud companies enables soldiers to make use of vastly greater quantities of intelligence information \u2014 and for longer periods of time \u2014 than they could otherwise maintain on their own internal servers.<\/p>\n

Microsoft did not respond to a request for comment.<\/p>\n

The \u2018wonderful world of cloud providers\u2019<\/h3>\n

In 2021, the Israeli government published a $1.2 billion tender for Project Nimbus<\/a>, designed to transfer the information systems of government ministries and security bodies to the public cloud servers of the winning companies and get access to their advanced services. Microsoft was one of several companies that submitted a bid for the tender, but in the end lost out to Amazon and Google<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Despite Microsoft\u2019s defeat in the Nimbus tender, the Defense Ministry continued to purchase services from the cloud giant. In particular, the documents state that Microsoft retains deep ties to Israel\u2019s Defense Ministry through managing projects relating to its \u201cspecial and complex systems,\u201d including \u201csensitive workloads\u201d that no other cloud company deals with.<\/p>\n

In August 2023, we can reveal, the Israeli army began purchasing OpenAI\u2019s latest language model, GPT-4. This tool, to which the military acquires access through the Azure platform rather than directly from OpenAI, is capable of analyzing billions of pieces of information, learning from past cases, and responding to spoken and written instructions.<\/p>\n

Once the war began, the army sharply increased its acquisitions of the GPT-4 engine: since October 2023, its consumption has been 20 times greater than during the pre-war period. From the documents, it is impossible to know whether the military used GPT-4 in classified air-gapped systems or those that can connect to the internet.<\/p>\n

OpenAI did not respond to questions about its knowledge of how the Israeli army uses its products. A spokesperson for the company simply said: \u201cOpenAI does not have a partnership with the IDF.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"The<\/a><\/p>\n
The landing page for ChatGPT on OpenAI\u2019s website, seen on a smart phone. (Creative Commons)<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

In recent years, Microsoft has reportedly invested<\/a> about $13 billion in OpenAI. In May, an article on Microsoft\u2019s website stated<\/a> that OpenAI\u2019s tools have the potential to be \u201cparadigm-changing\u201d for security and intelligence agencies and improve their accuracy and efficiency. \u201cIt\u2019s a powerful tool for analyzing satellite photographs and field maps, translating speech and text, offering interpretation, and creating virtual spaces for training,\u201d the article noted.<\/p>\n

Prior to 2024, OpenAI\u2019s terms included a clause<\/a> prohibiting the use of its services for \u201cmilitary and warfare\u201d activities. But in January 2024, as the Israeli army was ramping up its reliance on GPT-4 while pummeling the Gaza Strip<\/a>, the company quietly removed this clause<\/a> from its website and expanded its partnerships with militaries and national intelligence agencies.<\/p>\n

In October, OpenAI publicly stated<\/a> that it would examine cooperation with security agencies in the United States and \u201callied countries,\u201d believing that \u201cdemocracies should continue to take the lead in AI development, guided by values such as freedom, fairness, and respect for human rights.\u201d OpenAI also announced that it will cooperate with Anduril<\/a>, a company that manufactures AI-based drones, while it was reported last year that Microsoft provided its model to the CIA<\/a> for the analysis of top-secret documents in a closed internal system.<\/p>\n

The revelations in these documents correspond with the statements of Col. Racheli Dembinsky, commander of the Israeli army\u2019s Center of Computing and Information Systems Unit (\u201cMamram\u201d), which provides data processing for the whole military. At a conference near Tel Aviv last July, as +972 and Local Call<\/a> previously revealed, Dembinsky said that the army\u2019s operational capabilities were \u201cupgraded\u201d during the current war in Gaza thanks to the \u201cwonderful world of cloud providers\u201d that enabled \u201cvery significant operational effectiveness.\u201d<\/p>\n

This, Dembinsky said, was thanks to the \u201ccrazy wealth of services, big data, and AI\u201d that cloud providers offer \u2014 as the logos of Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Platform (GCP), and Amazon Web Services (AWS) appeared on the screen behind her.<\/p>\n

In her July lecture, Dembinsky explained that the army began working more intensively with the cloud companies due to the demands of the war. With the beginning of the ground invasion of Gaza in late October 2023, the army\u2019s systems were overwhelmed and \u201cresources were exhausted.\u201d This shortage of storage space and processing power, Dembinsky said, led to a decision in the military to \u201cgo outside, to the civilian world,\u201d where it was possible to purchase AI tools and computing power \u201cwithout a glass ceiling.\u201d<\/p>\n

The leaked documents show that the Israeli military\u2019s average monthly use of Azure\u2019s cloud storage facilities in the first six months of the war was 60 percent higher than in the four months leading up to it.<\/p>\n

In August, the IDF Spokesperson emphasized to +972 and Local Call that \u201cthe IDF\u2019s classified information is not transferred to civilian providers, and remains in the IDF\u2019s segregated networks\u201d \u2014 although our investigation at the time showed that the Israeli army had in fact stored some intelligence information collected via the mass surveillance of Gaza\u2019s population on servers managed by Amazon\u2019s AWS.<\/p>\n

This time, Israel\u2019s army and Defense Ministry declined to comment.<\/p>\n

_________________________________________________<\/p>\n

Harry Davies of <\/i>The Guardian contributed to this report.<\/i><\/p>\n

Go to Original – 972mag.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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